Hope Among the Ruins: The Heidelberg Project and Urban Renewal - Research Paper Example

Hope Among the Ruins Hope Among the Ruins: The Heidelberg Project and Urban Renewal Hope Among the Ruins 2 Abstract: Detroit’s Heidelberg Project is a unique example of guerilla, or “environmental,” art that likely would not have quite the same impact in a less beleaguered city. Detroit’s long, slow economic decline has devastated neighborhoods such as the one Tyree Guyton turned into a landmark that Detroiters and tourists alike find compelling and confrontational. The persistence of this local icon has changed the very meaning of urban renewal, which has traditionally meant clearing away the old and imposing something new and supposedly improved. The Heidelberg Project has persisted despite this notion. Hope Among the Ruins 3 Hope Among the Ruins: The Heidelberg Project and Urban Renewal Detroit belongs to the phantom legacy of American cities whose best days have always seemed to lay ahead. From its earliest days, Detroit has been a “city of the future” that never quite got there, starting with the imposition of the grid system in the 18th century to the near-mania for urban renewal of the 20th century. In a sense, Detroit’s “renewal” has been just around the corner ever since the Depression era, from which David Sheridan claims the city has never fully recovered (Sheridan, 1999). Economic disparity and the blight that accompanies it are part and parcel of this lamentable phenomenon, symptoms of a seemingly unattainable future. In this reality, all that’s left to those who live in poor and forgotten neighborhoods is a form of aesthetic protest that makes itself felt by decorating the blighted landscape, by reminding those in power that giving over rundown buildings to artistic expression can, in a real sense, bring about “urban renewal.” A sardonic comment The persistence and popularity of Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project is a spectacular manifestation of what has been called an angry artistic expression of frustration over willful civic neglect. Guyton’s organic creation is what Robert Zecker has called a sardonic comment on “the poverty existing in the parts of postindustrial cities that have all but been abandoned by cash-starved civic governments” (Zecker, 2008). The art that was created from abandoned houses and refuse “were often harsh critiques of the abandonment many Detroiters felt, facing vacant 4 houses; weedy fields overgrown with discarded refrigerators and baby buggies; and a city administration incapable of offering city services…” (Ibid, 2008). But the Heidelberg Project is more than just confrontation, it is a revolutionary gesture that says the future is not a thing that mayors, city councils and chambers of commerce bestow on a city. Guyton and those who have followed his example have reserved for themselves the power to effect change…even if change comes via the imposition of polka dots. Evidently, the city of Detroit, which dismembered the project on two occasions came to agree, if only in a tacit way. The city “gave up on its original goal of bulldozing the Heidelberg Project houses and finally started marketing (Guyton’s) artistic creations as tourist destinations” (Ibid, 2008). Art as urban renewal In a very real sense, the Heidelberg Project became art as urban renewal, though it didn’t start out that way. The notion of art and architecture sanctioned by the city was turned inside-out in Detroit. If it wasn’t bulldozed or razed and rebuilt as part of an ambitious political initiative, renewal couldn’t be considered legitimate if it didn’t come out of an urban planner’s computer. This was the way Detroit had always planned for progress. But the throngs of locals and out-of-town tourists that experienced Guyton’s creations, and the newspaper and journal articles that chronicled the project, could hardly be ignored. And when the Detroit Institute of Art accepted some samples of the project as exhibits, there was no denying that traditional concepts of urban renewal and civic identity had been overturned. Planning for the future meant nothing to people who lived in forgotten parts of the city. The Heidelberg Project was about self-empowerment. Guyton and the movement he spawned fed the imagination of people who felt 5 strongly about improvement but through a far different prism than the one the establishment looked through. It is particularly remarkable that the city came to accept the Heidelberg Project as renewal, however grudgingly, given that it was and always has been nothing more than guerilla art. In Art in Detroit Public Places, Dennis Nawrocki explained that the grassroots nature of the project, its rawness and often-defiant message, was never the product of public funding, as were less socially focused landmark urban projects such as Millennium Park in Chicago and Citygarden in St. Louis (Nawrocki, 2008). The Heidelberg Project is all the more phenomenal, in the truest sense of the word, given the political environment in which it took root. In her treatise ‘The Millennium Park Effect,’ Regina Flanagan theorizes that political culture and public art are inextricable, meaning that public notions of what is acceptable, of what constitutes art, depends largely on political “norms” (Flanagan, 2008). This doctrine extends to non-sanctioned art projects, such as the Heidelberg Project. “Even when they do not directly pay for it, federal, state and municipal units of government enact laws that proscribe our civic landscape and influence public art” (Ibid, 2008). Meaning and proscription Such proscription would seem to disprove the idea that Detroit is a progressively minded city, one that has always prided itself on being “futuristic.” David Sheridan points out that, as one of America’s most notable industrial boomtowns, Detroit was a utopian “technological frontier” that took pride in introducing new architectural and design values into the urban 6 landscape (Sheridan, 1999). Even after the Depression and the riots in 1967, city fathers continued to view their city’s outlook as ground breaking, trendsetting. Somehow, Tyree Guyton was able to galvanize the city’s past and present in a way that accepts the worst and transform it into something uplifting and regenerative. “Heidelberg seems to find meaning in the present without denying anything in Detroit’s immediate past, and without indulging in nostalgia for its distant past” (Ibid, 1999). For Guyton, his art was as much about preservation as it was anger and frustration. “The way I look at it, I’m putting life back into these houses. When I look back, it seems people didn’t care about them. I did” (Ibid, 1999). What Guyton ended up with somehow seemed so much a part of its surroundings, so organic, that some observers came to call it “environmental art.” Of course, one should never underestimate the importance of hope in an artistic phenomenon like Heidelberg. One can say without much hesitation that art itself is about hope, allowing us to glimpse a future that we otherwise would never be able to imagine. This, then, is surely the subtext in what Guyton has created, and in expressions of public art in urban areas throughout the U.S. In Reimagining Detroit: Opportunities for Redefining an American City, John Gallagher makes the point that public art does more than just fill up vacant space in our cities; it fills a vacant space in people’s souls (Gallagher, 2010). Gallagher says that size and scope doesn’t necessarily matter, nor does public funding. Art on a smaller scale often reflects the true nature of a city’s soul more poignantly because it makes a more personal statement than those made by grandiose creations (Ibid, 2010). Perhaps the most inspirational by-product of the 7 Heidelberg Project is the extent to which it has struck a chord with other artists in urban Detroit. One man’s art… Rejuvenating though Guyton’s artistic vision has been to many, there are others for whom, as the saying goes, “there’s no accounting for taste.” To its critics, the Heidelberg Project is little more than the embellishment of a wart, a way to dress up and call attention to the ultimate failing of Detroit’s futuristic, utopian vision of itself. Indeed, it’s possible to see what the project accomplished as a way of symbolically waving the white flag, as if to celebrate the fact that a once-great city has at last come to terms with deterioration. The crowd that assembled in 1999 to watch as the city razed the project was surprisingly ambivalent. “Truth be told, many residents resent Heidelberg, even if its creators mean it to be a gesture on their behalf. Perhaps some feel that Heidelberg is already an anachronism, a fossil left over from a painful period in Detroit’s history” (Sheridan, 1999). If hope for a better future is the point of it all, many seemed to be saying that it’s best not to say anything at all. Criticism of the Heidelberg Project may boil down to nothing more than a case of “one man’s art is another man’s trash.” Art may be in the eye of the beholder and, if that’s true, urban renewal for many is a matter of bulldozing the remains of a lamentable past and replacing them with a future marked by gleaming, habitable structures in safer neighborhoods. All of which seems to return to those factors that bring projects like Heidelberg and other examples of environmental art into being. Guyton’s neighborhood, the one he cared so much about, was victimized for years by the indifference of a government that seemed far more interested in 8 maintaining predominantly white, affluent communities like Grosse Pointe. “As a better future dawns,” said Wendy Walters, “many feel it’s best to erase the signs of past sickness” (Ibid, 1999). But it may be too late for that. The Heidelberg Project appears to have entered Detroit’s soul, having become a part of the city in a way that only an icon can. The project’s trademark polka dots can be seen on park benches, public phone facades and abandoned buildings throughout the city. It’s become a way of honoring the Heidelberg Project and those ruined monuments that have passed from functionality into quasi-archaeological ruins. “The (polka) dots mark the artifactuality of the city, so that abandoned buildings become abandoned-building sculptures. In a sense, Heidelberg has already assimilated Detroit, turning it into an ecstatic labyrinth-or helping us see the ecstatic labyrinth that already exists…” (Ibid, 1999). If that is the case, and Heidelberg has “assimilated Detroit,” then those structures that are so notably marked by polka dots stand as more than reminders of abandoned housing and human misery. They are encompassed by the same notion of urban preservation that animated the vision of the Heidelberg Project. Conclusion The city’s past efforts to destroy the Heidelberg Project have only intensified the public’s belief in what Guyton and others have tried to communicate. People from across the country and from places as far away as Australia have embraced the underlying message that the creation of a vibrant aesthetic community can renew and strengthen a physical one. In their analysis of 9 Heidelberg and its social effect, Nasar and Moffat state that its most important impact is its power to keep creating interest, to motivate people to care about community in a more profound way than ever before. “Clearly, this work is not only about what you see. It’s about the dialog it engenders” (Nasar and Moffat, 2005). The Heidelberg Project teaches us that urban renewal is as much about faith as it is about paint, nails and money. In concluding that Tyree Guyton’s art is important because it makes a difference, Nasar and Moffat explain that “The Heidelberg Project offers an alternative vision to young children in one of America’s most blighted urban areas; it broadens community awareness of the power of art…” (Ibid, 2005). There is little we can know about the long-term effect of the Heidelberg Project and other organic public art crusades, but we can safely assume that it will live on, either as an extension of itself or reincarnated as some other image espousing hope for renewal. 10 References Flanagan, R. (2008). “The Millennium Park Effect: A Tale of Two Cities.” The Practice of Public Art, Cameron Cartiere and Shelly Willis, ed. 133. Gallagher, J. (2010). Reimagining Detroit: Opportunities for Redefining an American City. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. 108-109. Nasar, J. and Moffat, D. (2005). The Heidelberg Project: Tyree Guyton. Cambridge, MA: Places. 16, 3. 14-17. Nawrocki, D. (2008). Art in Detroit Public Places. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Sheridan, D. (1999). Making Sense of Detroit. Michigan Quarterly Review. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan. 38, 3. Walters, W.S. (2001). “Turning the Neighborhood Inside Out: Imagining a New Detroit in Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project.” TDR: The Drama Review. 45, 4. 64-93. Zecker, R. (2008). Metropolis: The American City in Popular Culture. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. 7-8. Publisher: Wayne State University Press Date: August 15, 2008 Edition: Illustrated ISBN13: 9780814333785 ISBN: 0814333788 BINC: 9357153 Winter 2001, Vol. 45, No. 4 (T172), Pages 64-93 Posted Online March 13, 2006. (doi:10.1162/105420401772990333) © 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Turning the Neighborhood Inside Out: Imagining a New Detroit in Tyree Guytons Heidelberg Project Read More